I See the Light
by kiboeme
Summary: "All at once, everything is different, now that I see you." Inspired by the boat scene in Tangled. Fluff. ZelGan. K.


GapunZel

**All those days watching from the windows  
All those years outside looking in**

She had no idea why the Gerudo King had come to Hyrule Castle on that day. It was not until much later that he revealed to her his intentions—to take over Hyrule. They had never gone into the details of what that would have entailed; they didn't need to. Ganondorf had dreamed about the moment in graphic detail since boyhood, and Zelda was smart enough to know what he would've had to do to replace the current king.

However, something in her subconscious had already known what he meant to do the moment he stepped foot into the borders of Hyrule. After the messenger had come to inform the king of an approaching Gerudo party, Zelda had been awaiting their arrival with a growing sense of dread. She begged her father to let her sit beside his throne on the dias on their arrival day, and for years afterward would swear that it was fate and fate alone that had convinced him to let her do so.

**All that time never even knowing  
Just how blind I've been**

At the time, she had been sixteen. Old enough to understand what was expected of her and old enough to be offered several suitors a week by the men her father had appointed as some sort of royal matchmakers. Yet at the same time, she was so young. She knew what she could squeeze from books and the lips of her tutors, but they hadn't wanted her to know. To know things was a king's job, not a queen's, and no one in the nobility wanted to give her the chance to rule without marrying one of their sons. Zelda didn't love it, but she had not realized quite how closed-in she had been.

When she pictured the Gerudo king, it was not with pretty imagery. All that her books knew of were the savages, the thieves that wore no clothes to withstand the desert heat and taught every one of their number to act like the foulest of criminal muck in the bars. If the women were so coarse, the one male had to be much worse.

She imagined a being with his head literally made of fire, a body of ready-made leather cracked and worn by the sun. Every one of her defenses were up, ready to condemn them all with a single, scathing glance. She had been practicing copying her father in the mirror.

The last thing Zelda expected was a handsome man.

**Now I'm here blinking in the starlight  
Now I'm here suddenly I see**

It hadn't even taken very long for him to show her what he knew, to change her whole perception of the world.

He had taken her on a truer adventure than anything she had read of in her silly Hylian storybooks, legends of the Hero and the princesses of destiny waiting for their savior. He couldn't let her believe in those stories. They were real, that was true. He would know, after all, having been the Great Evil slain again and again by the sacred weapons of the gods. But that wasn't why he was afraid for her to fill her head with the legends. No, not at all. After all, it wasn't as if she would be able to discover that he was the evil.

**Standing here it's all so clear  
I'm where I'm meant to be  
**

Zelda was bright. She was strong and proud, a Gerudo soul nestled among the soft cushion of Hyrule's easy spirits. They called her Hyrule's Treasure, but even her nursemaid couldn't see just how treasurable the Princess truly was.

So Ganondorf had taken her from the rigid confines of the castle walls and shown her the world. He had taken her to places she was familiar with from pictographs and textbooks, like the endless forests of Faron and the high cliffs of Zora's Domain to the east. He took her to new places, and found out that she loved the ocean with a passion he had never seen before. The way she looked at it, the way it seeped into her eyes and turned them the color of the waves, the way she stood strong and proud against the battering saline wind… It was almost as if she were a sailor, prepared to conquer the bitter ocean whitecaps with strength of will alone. She was so beautiful in so many ways other than the physical. She made the great Gerudo king weak in the knees in a way no one else ever could.

Just watching her move was like water and air to the king. There was a grace and an innocence alongside her pride that was nothing like the Gerudo women he knew. Nothing like the Hylians, either. She was just Zelda. The beautiful, perfect, eternal Princess Zelda Harkinian.

**All those days chasing down a daydream  
All those years living in a blur**

It was so strange to be this way with her. He had come back to Hyrule prepared to conquer, reborn again from the ancient rage boiling in his blood and eager to satiate his thirst for Hylian blood. When he walked into the throne room, however, he had paused, spellbound by her. She had not moved a finger nor said a word—Ganondorf knew this for certain, as he remembered the moment clear as day. Yet something about her had simply captivated him.

**All that time never truly seeing  
Things, the way they were**

He would never figure out exactly what about her had managed to hold him at bay that morning. He wasn't sure what made her so different from her dozen predecessors, all of whom he had crushed without a second thought. A little voice inside his head, however, had always whispered that it was because of her willingness to bear her soul. She had a brighter spirit, and had not yet learned to hide it behind her Wisdom like she had before. She never would be given an opportunity to hide herself away, Ganondorf had made very sure of that. He encouraged her to just be Zelda.

It had taken him a long time to admit that he wasn't just filling in for her father. That he didn't only care about her that way. Of course he wanted to protect her; the Hyrulians she spent so much time around wanted nothing more than to silence her. They may as well wrap her in a burial shroud, as far as Ganondorf was concerned.

When he did finally relent to his heart, he was surprised. It didn't make him feel soft or malleable. Zelda wasn't a cake to be indulged in when he had done a little extra training the day before. Realizing that he loved her, really truly _loved_ her, was nothing short of equal to the spike of empowerment that had come with the Triforce of Power. Perhaps the draught of love was even stronger.

**Now she's here shining in the starlight  
Now she's here suddenly I know**

Fate had lead him to Hyrule many times, and he could count on any measure given how many times he had been successful in his endeavors there. Not once had he managed to accomplish his goals, not once had he truly taken Hyrule for his own and spread the bounties of the goddess' lands to his people.

For the first time, he started to realize that he had, perhaps, been missing something all along. Everything in their world was dynamic. The river in the moat wore away at the base of the castle until it had to be moved and rebuilt several miles away. The desert sand scraped away at the carved stone faces of the Sand Goddess idols in the Gerudo Valley, the very material of Din's good earth showing its contempt for their race. The leaves fell from the trees in an autumn hour and dissolved into the earth, prepared to feed their successors on the branches of the mother tree just as older leaves had fed them. There were only four things that were static, which remained unchanged despite all of time.

Ganondorf. Zelda. Ganondorf in Hyrule. Zelda on its throne.

**If she's here it's crystal clear  
I'm where I'm meant to go**

Had he _ever_ wanted a kingdom? Had he ever truly thirsted for the Triforce? Yes, he had. None of those memories were mere fabrications of legend or Ganondorf's mind.

But Fate, _Fate_ was different. Fate had not planted those desires for revenge deep into his marrow; his mothers had. Fate had not starved his people. Fate had not dangled the Triforce within Ganondorf's reach. All Fate had ever done was bring Ganondorf to the throne room of Hyrule. Bring him to stand at her feet and to see her.

**And at last I see the light  
And it's like the fog has lifted**

And there wasn't a soul in Hyrule that could tell you they weren't fated to be together. They were two halves of the same whole, perfect complements fitted to each other in every way. Zelda of the sky people, of grace and beauty, of bounty and purity and wisdom. Ganondorf was of the earth, he was power and strength and skill. He was proud, she was stubborn. She was clever, he was bold. Someone somewhere along the line had taken these two sides of the same coin and melted them down. When they were reshaped in this life, they had become a golden chain.

**And at last I see the light  
And it's like the sky is new**

He showed her his people and taught her to arch. Zelda honed her skills as a markswoman, taking delight in the noisy meals and boisterous lives of his sisters just as much as she enjoyed the freedom of wearing pants and as little clothing as she liked. Ganondorf never let slip a complaint.

**And it's warm and real and bright**

He was so much gentler than she had ever thought. His arms were bound in muscle and there wasn't an ounce of fat on him, corded strength wrapping around his towering figure.. Nothing about him was soft or gentle before this, not his voice or his clothes or his way of saying words. Nothing but his hands when they settled on her hips, nothing but his lips when they guided themselves down her neck, nothing but his eyes when he watched her run or read or laugh.

Ganondorf held her as she slept at night, enveloping her fragile Hylian form with his massive frame on cool nights and letting her splay her torso on top of his when it was warm She had nightmares in the night sometimes, and when she woke from them with a pounding heart and teary eyes, he wiped them away and soothed her back to sleep.

He knew what made her tick and what she liked the most. It wasn't long before the shelves in her bedrooms in Hyrule and Gerudo Valley were covered with small glass figures, tiny bottles of the pure white sand from the beach of the Great Bay, and brilliant feathers from exotic birds. He braided gem-studded ribbons into her hair for her, then rubbed her scalp to coax out the soreness at night and put her to sleep. Always he teased her by slipping awful puns into the most mundane conversations or tickling her feet when she was trying to read a book. Anything to summon a smile or a laugh.

**And the world has somehow shifted**

They didn't have children, and they wouldn't for a while. Zelda didn't seem to mind either way, but Ganondorf was a selfish man. Even after they married, he didn't want her to turn that smile on someone other than him.

She never let him use the words her people so often did for husbands and wives. 'I am not yours,' she would finally say, 'I do not belong to you. Not the way the other wives do.' He was so proud of her then, breaking free of the chains that had bound her mind for decades. 'I am not your decoration,' as if anyone in the world were worthy of simply wearing her upon his arm like a valuable brooch, 'We are the same.'

More than once, he intentionally caused a scandal in the court. Zelda even instituted a game between them—whoever managed to make the nobles' faces redder, whether through embarrassment or fury, won, and the loser had to clean the other's study for a week instead of the maid. Neither was sure who would be worse off if they lost.

Perhaps best of all, Ganondorf never felt the need to do anything other than _be_. Be with Zelda, be her lover and her guardian and her light. Be happy. Yes, she was all he wanted. All he ever could have desired.

He longed for conquest, yes. Conquest of himself.

**All at once everything is different  
Now that I see you**


End file.
